


a little explosion of hope

by charmtion



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: (biggest understatement of the century there), (with morals), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bad Parenting, College, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Drama, Jon and the Starks Are Not Related, Love Confessions, Montrachet & Chandeliers, Wealthy/Rich Kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:49:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24393799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmtion/pseuds/charmtion
Summary: ‘It is another inevitable thing in the structure of her existence, what will happen now between them. Inevitable, but she finds that she doesn’t mind that fact at all.’Jon and Sansa meet again for the first time in years. They are flawed, jaded, bored of the high-flying world they were born into; a world they once found an escape from within each other—briefly, gloriously—before they were torn apart. Time spins, history repeats; can they escape again together?   [spoiler: yes,yesthey can].
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 127
Kudos: 204





	1. absent fathers

**Author's Note:**

> So, I just read and then watched _Normal People_ by Sally Rooney and have had Foy Vance’s [She Burns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfRPCdMfCM) on repeat for a week and this is the result. It is a step into the unknown for me: Sansa and Jon as rich kids, a college au in which Jon isn’t a professor(!), a verse where parents are problematic and the Starks aren’t perfect. This chapter sets the scene, the next two are pure smut [hence the **E** rating] really — but smut with _feelings_ and the _discussion of issues_ woven into them, okay! Give it a go? You will?? Oh, thank you! 😍

The wine glass in Sansa’s hand is cool, damp. Her fingers feel white-hot wrapped around it, thumb tapping at the stem every so often. She does this in an attempt to ground herself; it does not work.

Dimly, she is aware of half a dozen conversations happening around her. Buzz of a hive: their voices, the way their minds work. She catches fleeting snatches of chosen topics — an upcoming essay, applying for permits for summer fieldwork, the ongoing troubles across the narrow sea, a bomb threat grounding the flights out of King’s Landing, _The Golden Lion_ closing down in the city-centre. 

Each topic is treated almost exactly the same. Discussed with a similar weight, as though each of them are equal. It is something Sansa is still getting used to: this easy earnestness they all seem to apply to things she finds trivial or less than in comparison to the other, more pressing matters she identifies in their conversations. She once said as much; they looked at her, then laughed — she laughed, too, when she realised they thought she was being witty, sarcastic.

Now she just keeps quiet. The most she offers is a noncommittal hum, a low _perhaps_ when they decide to press her a little more firmly to pass comment. For some reason, her opinion seems to matter to them. Not her true opinion, of course — the one they manufacture for themselves, garnered through the responses she gives that they take a liking to, the nods and hums they interpret as sounding in their favour, all tangled together to prop up the fragile self-important images they heft of themselves.

Coming from old money, she is used to such characters as these. Students bonded together by the slippery structure of a shared existence: silver spoons, private schools, summers in palatial second-homes arraigned in gated communities around the coast. These are the children of lords, lawyers to the rich, hedge-fund managers skittering between wealthy clients and the Iron Bank, members of the privy council — the hands and ears and eyes and flailing fists of the government, the monarchy, the ruling elite.

Her sister managed to escape the structured inevitability of it all. Sansa taps at the glass-stem softly now, tears a light mist prickling the very edges of her eyes. Thinking of Arya always sets her so: a strange mixture of profound love, relief — jealousy, too. It blisters up between her ribs, feathers arrows through her belly. Her little sister off chasing her own dreams, following her own fate — _deciding_ it. She is very proud, if a little resentful, of it all. Harbours this small, intricate web of feelings like a secret.

Sansa is the eldest after Robb. It has never been a choice for her, what route she will follow or be set upon. Never been a surprise to her, the shape her life will take. It was all decided long before she was ever a blot in her mother’s womb. Decided _for_ her: the route, the course, the shape. For the most part, she has simply gone along with it. Quietly.

“Hello? Earth to Sansa.”

There is a wine bottle being shimmied back and forth in front of her face now, lips mouthing the words _want a top-up_ as the bottle sways. She blinks a little owlishly, momentarily mesmerised by the cool drops of condensation glittering on the glass.

“Hello,” she says — a little stupidly, she thinks; but they all laugh. “Yes. Cheers.”

All of them laugh again as she raises her glass in a mock-toast, sinks her tongue full of the cool, tart wine. They laugh and they talk, these cultured characters she calls her friends. They laugh and they talk and she listens quietly and sometimes she hums and laughs politely with them. But she doesn’t understand them. She doesn’t like them much, either. Not really.

They are just some bit of drapery softening the gilt-bars of the cage she is trapped in. Myrish lace, expensive silks, flowery perfume dressing up what is really inside — emptiness. Nothing. Not even air.

*

Party is in full swing now. There are champagne corks littering the lawn, someone being sick noisily into the yew hedge bordering the garden. Music drifts in a vain attempt to cover the retching, roiling, cursing; it does not work.

Sansa has found a quiet spot to sit and have a cigarette. A stone bench pressed into the furthest corner of the garden. There is a tall, thin tree draping itself overhead; would be a sweet, shady spot at the height of a summer day. Bumps lift on her forearms now, the air is cool against her cheeks. She puts the cigarette between her lips, lights it.

One slow drag into her lungs, a swish of smoke blown up into the sky. Clear tonight, one of those late spring evenings that rolls in after an unexpectedly warm day. Makes her wish for the sweater left folded neatly on her bed; the sweater she dithered back and forth between bringing. Runs her fingertips over the gooseflesh above her elbow, watches the shapes of society moving through the motions of a party behind the windows of the house.

Behind glass. That’s often how she feels. Like she is separated from what is happening around her somehow — like it is a world just beyond her reach. It’s not even a world she wants to be a part of particularly; she just knows she _should_ want to be a part of it. It’s what her parents would want her to want. Maybe it is what she used to want, too. Back when she was a young, pretty, girlish thing; back when popularity was the only currency she knew or cared about.

It’s different now. Moving away from home, the North, the trappings of her family name with all its worn-wood wealth and polished parquet floors — something has changed inside her, something in her makeup, something that used to nestle deep within her bones. Even surrounded by the buzz of a hive, she feels the vibrations of it: that _something_. Like she is on a cliff-edge, looking down. A precipice, a gulf carved out from change. Like she is ready to jump headfirst to meet it.

The cigarette has burned down to her fingers. She watches its end glowing like an ember in the cool night air, oddly detached from the sting it sets on her skin. Lifts it to her lips for one last, glancing drag. Pinches the dying spark out between her fingers, puts the butt into her pocket.

“Most people would just chuck it away.”

She doesn’t turn to find the voice, just smiles into the dark. “Maybe I’m not most people.”

“You’re Sansa Stark.” A little pause — for effect, maybe. “Aren’t you?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

Winces internally as soon as she has said it. She doesn’t say things like that. Flippant, flirty things belong in mouths that are not her own. Margaery says things like that: shell-pink lips curled up into a seductive smirk. Sansa is not Margaery; she will never be Margaery. Finally, she has realised she never _wants_ to be Margaery or anyone like Margaery — as much as her parents would sell their souls for her to be.

“I am,” she says now. “Sansa Stark.”

“Thank you for not littering on my lawn,” says the voice. “Sansa Stark.”

She can hear the smile in it, that woodsmoke voice. A moment later, she sees the smile: glinting white as the moon overhead. He’s handsome, the man that steps up to her little stone bench. Tall, dressed all in black. His hair is dark and as he smiles he runs a hand back through it. She finds herself smiling back.

“Jon,” she says — and their smiles widen simultaneously. “Jon Snow.”

*

It was bound to happen at some point, Sansa supposes. Robb told her back when she first moved to the city that Jon was enrolled at the same university. His old rugby mate, shod-hopping through schools on scholarships, mingling with the highest echelons of polite society — laughing at them to their faces, most of the time. He’s never been one to say anything behind a person’s back. Good and straight and true — and a mean centre on the field. That’s Jon Snow.

Been a few years since she last saw him. Admittedly, she’s thought about him once or twice. Tame thoughts mostly — the trouble he left behind, the hell he raised in his Night’s Watch jersey, the shape of his smile — occasionally, they have taken a wilder hue. The shape of his smile still features in _those_ thoughts; but it’s usually pressed up against some intimate part of her anatomy worked over by the pale-imitation of her own fingers.

Sansa looks at that same smile now, a blush starting in her cheeks. Inexplicably, her mouth waters.

“You like the city?”

Manages to shake her head. “I hate it.”

“I like it,” he says, smiling that smile. “The anonymity of it all.”

“Yes. I suppose there is that.”

His eyes flicker over her flushed face very slowly; she feels naked, wet, hot. “Sansa Stark.” A little emphasis, tongue clicking against his teeth. “All grown up, aren’t you?”

“Trying to be.”

Is she? Why did she say that? She catches herself midway through the action of tossing her hair. Pauses, lets it settle across her shoulder: long waves of copper she twirls now between her fingers. Notices that he is watching her — closely — dark grey eyes following the twist of her hair round her thumb. That vibration again, lower this time.

“This house,” she says to distract herself. “You own it?”

He shrugs. “Left to me by my father. You know — the one I never met.”

“Ah.” Her voice is softer now. “That one.”

They smile. “Mum wanted me to sell it.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“It’s a nice house.”

“Close to campus,” she reasons. “Must be worth a — ”

“ — small fortune. Aye.” He nods, runs a hand down his face as if the talk of money wearies him as much as it does her. It’s refreshing to see. “Whereabouts are you living?”

Makes a gesture. “Maegor’s Court.”

“Nice and close.”

She frowns. “To what?”

“To me.”

“Oh,” she says — and the air feels thicker. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

*

They drink, but neither of them seems to get any drunker. It’s a pleasant heaviness, the syrupy weight of tipsy wallowing in her blood. Host and guest quitting the same party, watching it from a distance. They sit on the lawn near to Sansa’s stone bench, passing a bottle of Montrachet between them.

“Boyfriend?”

Sansa smiles at the grass. “No.”

“Girlfriend?”

Meets his gaze, the mischievous glitter of it. “Haven’t tried that. Yet.”

He dashes his lips with the back of his hand, laughing as he rests the bottle down in the grass between them. She bites her lip, struck — suddenly — by the beauty of him.

“What about you?”

“There was one,” he says. “But it didn’t work out.” Flails a gesture; Sansa picks out the threads of tension in his shoulders. “She was a bit… wild.”

Little huff of gentle laughter through her nose. “Played with fire, did you?”

“Something like that.”

They look at each other and Sansa feels it again: that low thrumming. Vibrates — in her breastbone, the small of her back. Hastily, she looks away. Down at the grass, threads her fingers full of it.

“Robb’s engaged.”

“I heard. The Westerlings.” Huffs a little laugh himself now. “I imagine your mother could’ve been happier.”

Keeps her eyes fixed on her fingerholds in the murky green. “She had her sights set a little higher, I think.” Tries to keep her voice easy, neutral. “But she’s happy enough for him.”

“And your father?”

“Who knows.”

“Still a hard man to read?”

The grass rips from the roots. “Impossible.”

“Proud of you, I should think.”

“I wouldn’t know. He’s never told me.” Crushed stems leaking onto her skin; a bitter edge to her voice now. “Busy with the boys, the businesses.” Blinks — hard. “I don’t mind.”

“Absent fathers,” he says gently. “We share that much.”

Lasts for less than a second, the little pulse of quiet treading echoes on the cool air of the night. Sansa drops the stems of grass, turns toward him.

“I missed you,” she murmurs. “You just… disappeared.”

“Mm. Had to.” He is looking at the sky, the stars. “Chased out of town. Mum’s still pulling strings to get me back.” Rolls his shoulders, swings his gaze to meet her own. She shivers. “But I don’t think I want to go back, if I’m honest.”

She studies him, quietly. “You’re happy here?”

“Is anyone happy here — or anywhere?”

Her eyes travel the lines of his face: strong, clean. “Maybe. I wouldn’t know.” She wants a cigarette suddenly, something hot to burn away the words waiting on her tongue. “I… I feel sort of numb most of the time. Like I’m staring at life through a window.” Her teeth clench; her fingers itch for something to tap. “I want to reach out, touch things, _move_ things — but there’s glass in the way.”

“I know what you mean.”

Flutter in her chest, heartbeat drumming in her ears. “Do you?”

“Aye.”

Sansa doesn’t realise she has gone back to staring at the grass till she looks up at his face, searching for an answer to the warmth that has just enveloped her. His hand on her own, fingers twined together amidst the cool grass.

There is a tightness to her throat, a burning behind her eyes; but she holds it all at bay, gives him a shaky smile. He rasps a thumb across her knuckles. She breathes slowly, eyes flickering to follow the shape of the words on his lips.

“Missed you, too.”

They sit like that for a long time, life going through its motions in the house behind them as the stars shine above for only the two of them to see — then she gets up from the lawn. He gets up, too.

It is another inevitable thing in the structure of her existence, what will happen now between them. Inevitable, but she finds that she doesn’t mind that fact at all — because it is something fated for and by herself, a crack in the gilt-edged cage, a chance to breathe again. She holds this small, intricate inevitability close like a secret.

He follows her back into the house. Quietly.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is already written so you, my adoring fans ***** waves at an empty room ***** shouldn’t have long to wait. I really like writing this verse. It feels… _decadent_ for some reason — as well as difficult and flawed. All that expensive wine and yew-edged lawns, I suppose... Let me know what you think if you’re here! I **always** reply to comments. I shall be off now. Thanks for reading if you did, my loves! ❤️


	2. harder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > ‘There is an edge of violence to her thoughts, her feelings, to the way she moves now — an edge of violence only Jon brings out.’
> 
> thank you **so** much for the love for this au, my honeys — without further ado, here is the second chapter _i.e._ the beginnings of the smutty-smut-smut... 🔥

It happened once before: a tangle of limbs when they were teenagers. Sansa remembers how hot his fingers felt on her skin, the way his palms — roughened from playing rugby that winter — caught at the silky fabric of her blouse as he unbuttoned it. She remembers the thunder of her heartbeat, the quickness of her breathing, the mild sense of panic that passed through her at the speed of her feeling, at the frenzy, the _urgency_ of it all.

There is the tiniest glimmer of the same spiking in her blood now as they move through the shadowy house. Guests lolling half-asleep on the ornate staircase, a couple kissing beside a girl crying quietly on the same sofa. Bottles scattered everywhere, a portrait of a silver-haired man hanging a little crooked on its perch above the mantlepiece.

Her phone vibrates in the small bag resting against her hip. Margaery, probably — or Elinor ringing up to herd her home. Sansa ignores it; she won’t be herded, locked back into that gilt-edged cage to listen to her friends twitter and giggle prettily. Not tonight. Never again if she can help it.

She stumbles now, her mind on other things. There is a hand on her elbow, steadying her from a fall she doesn’t even know if she would feel. Her skin is tight, her heart is in her throat — and the heat of Jon’s hand on her arm makes her want to faint. He holds her gently for a moment, then shifts the breath around his mouth a bit.

“Found your feet yet?”

“Not yet,” she whispers. “Not exactly.”

Beat of quiet, then — “Little fish in a big pond, hm?”

“No. I don’t mind that.” She works her jaw gently as he loosens his grip on her elbow. “It’s like you said. The anonymity of it all. It’s… nice.”

He gives a little hum in response: low in his chest, a rumble to match with the rhythm of the vibration still shivering the lines of her bones. She turns, her thumb and index finger catching the hollow of her throat in a v-shaped cradle. He looks her up and down: the totter of her heels on the stair, the flames in her hair, her eyes.

“Sans,” he says lowly — and she whimpers out loud.

Their footsteps quicken now along the polished floorboards of the upper hallway, a dull drumming to match the thunder of her heartbeat.

*

Room he leads her to is cool, quiet. A sash-window crooked halfway open, the whisper of a breeze stirring the heavy curtains looped back into their gold-edged cradles. Sansa runs her fingers through the draped fabric as Jon shuts the door — she closes her eyes as she listens to the lock turn, _click_.

“Sans,” he says again, lower this time.

A shiver crackles down her nape. “I’ve missed that.”

“Does nobody else call you that anymore?”

“They do.” Looks at him over her shoulder. “But they aren’t you, Jon.”

He steps toward her. She half-turns away from the window, her fingers wringing a knot into the heavy curtain. Another step. She backs up, sigh skating between her teeth as her back comes flush with the cool wall beside the window. Her fingers twist, the curtain lifts to swish in front of her hips like a bullfighter’s cape, like a flag of challenge, surrender. Holds it for a moment — then she lets it drop.

“San— _Sansa_.”

They kiss now and her heart is in her mouth. _Take it_ , she thinks. _Take it, bite it, swallow it down_ — _make it yours_. Her fingers wring another knot: twined tight into the wild ink-dark curls tumbled from the bun at the back of his head. She wrenches on it. He hisses. She tastes rust on her lip. There is an edge of violence to her thoughts, her feelings, to the way she moves now — an edge of violence only Jon brings out.

“Fuck me,” she breathes. “I want you to fuck me.”

His palms are rougher than she remembers. They feel divine on her throat: a hitch on her skin to match the breath tangling just beneath their press. He squeezes, eyes alight to hear the moan she makes. Drags them down, hands smoothing the curves of her breasts, fingers finding her nipples cutting ridges in the soft fabric of her dress. He thumbs them slowly, then catches one in a twist that makes her knees buckle.

“You missed that, too?”

She can’t speak. Can only moan, nod — curl her fingers tighter into his hair, drag his head down so she can bite at his lip. He kisses her, then dips his mouth to her throat, hands skating the curves of her waist, her hips. Slowly, quietly, he pulls the sash at her side free. Bared to him — it’s how she should be. Her grip loosens in his hair; she tips back her head, shuts her eyes to blot out the chandelier dripping from the ceiling.

*

There is a larger one in Winterfell’s formal dining room; full of candles, not crystals. It throws odd flames, odd shadow-shapes that make the walls come alive with ghosts. It is extravagant: the beeswax candles burn out in a single sitting, the housekeeper has to climb a ladder to even light them — still, her father orders it lit, night after night. He sits beneath its flickering glow, eyes set like stone within its shadows as he passes some judgment, speaks some sentence.

Sansa gasps now. Her father’s weather-worn face dances across her mind and she clamps down hard on the fingers Jon is working inside her, desperate to chase those flinty eyes out from behind her own, that sullen brow, the stinging memory of the last words he spoke to her before she left again for the city.

“Harder,” she breathes — a thread of panic chasing her tone. “ _Harder_. Please.”

Jon obeys, fingers crooked deep, his thumb a harsher rasp across her clit. Her hips rock from side to side, the sheets of the bed unhooking from the mattress with her movement, runching rivers of white cotton till her body feels cushioned by a cloud. She is naked, wet, hot — she wants to burn up with the wanting, disappear. Her fingers circle the wrist of the hand he’s got buried between her thighs, push against it.

“Please,” she whimpers. “Harder, Jon.”

Closes her eyes as she listens to the sounds of her body welcoming the hardened workings of his fingers. Her hipbones ache where she throws them so wide, the muscles in her thighs are burning. But that’s all she wants. Just heat, just bodies. All she wants to be. Him and her. Bones, blood, breath: anonymous, apart from anything but each other. No chandeliers dripping candlelight from the ceiling — no sigils steeped in history, no honouring the hallowed family name.

 _Your mother doesn’t want you to come back this summer_.

“Harder.”

 _What you did years ago in this very room was bad enough, but what you are doing now in that gods-forsaken city… it makes my forefathers turn in their tombs_.

“Harder! Please, Jon — _please_.”

It hurts — it _hurts_ — but she is raw and open and aching and there is a thin, sharp blade slipping white-hot between her hipbones and that heat brims beneath her skin now, threatens to burst. Her head is lost to cotton, her fingers are full of it, she is biting down on a bit of ripped sheet she does not remember ripping.

 _Go, Sansa_ — _you bring shame to this family, this pack_. _Go_.

She is violent and hungry with it and there is nothing to ground her — no glass-stem to tap, no polished company, no polite conversation — because she is a hurricane inside his hands and he does nothing to stay the storm he is building. He only stokes it.

“ _Jon_.”

His mouth sinks down onto her cunt as his name leaves her lips. He rolls her clit deftly with his tongue, then draws her up — _sucks_ — and Winterfell and all its candlelit ghosts explode in a shatter of white-hot stone and shame as she blinks open, shrieking eyes to the crystals shivering in the blank white space high above her.

*

Before, she was on her back and he was a shadow moving over her in that unlit hall. Her father’s chair at the head of the table was kicked onto its side atop the flagstones; Jon stood in its place, his hand on her throat, her hips spread wide, her ankles link-locked behind his back. They got caught — of course they got caught — Sansa cried out Jon’s name at the same moment the spray of shocked voices echoed against the stonework.

She has never come harder — till now.

Jon kisses her cunt softly. She rolls her hips as he gentles her down, then rakes her nails lightly across his shoulder. He swarms her in an instant; she tastes the salt-sweet tang of herself on his tongue. Breathes a word into his mouth and he rolls onto his back, hands on her hips to help her sit astride him.

There is a bit of her that wants to be on her hands and knees suddenly, then he sweeps his fingers down between her breasts and she is too far gone to remember when she first got lost to the idea of any other position but this one. Her hips shimmy a little; the hand he has got on one tightens its grip, thumb rasping the ridge of bone singing for his touch beneath her skin. He looks up at her, that smile on his lips.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

Rolls her neck as he flattens a fingertip against her nipple. “Do you regret it?”

“Fucking you — or getting caught?”

Pinches it between finger and thumb; she moans. “Both.”

“Neither,” he says. “You came so hard that night, Sansa.” Thumb pulls away — she hears a suck — it comes back wet, trips a slow circle round her nipple. “I haven’t felt anything like it since.” His mouth on it now; she doesn’t remember how he got to sitting. “Worth being run out of town for.”

Her fingers skitter over his hair. “Do you mean that?”

“Aye, Sans.” He kisses her between her breasts. “I do.”

She dips to press a kiss to the top of his head. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” His lips move against her skin. “So, so much.”

Their faces level. “You’re happy I’m here?”

“Mm.” He nods, licks his lower lip, nips it — smiles as she whimpers. “Are you?”

“I am.”

“Good.”

The word is a breath beneath her ear. She tips back her head, offers him her throat. He skates his lips down the curve of it, back up to her jaw. Hand at her nape, angling her to look at him even as she lolls back against his touch: so open to him her skin feels like sand, slipping and sinking to suit the dent of his fingertips.

“I want to feel you come like that again,” he murmurs as the hand on her hip sets her body rocking — slowly, slowly. “Will you do that for me, sweetheart?”

Nodding now, her fingers skittering down his chest, aching to circle his cock, skate a thumb over the head, lift her hips, sink down slow. She whimpers, searching now. Finds it, gives a slow swipe of her palm up toward his belly — and he moans.

A little explosion of hope, the way that sound bursts between her ribs, shatters glass and stone, lets her breathe. Lets her _breathe_ — even as she is crushed by the weight of her want for him.

There is a rush of warmth in the space below her breastbone: an empty space too-quickly filled by the light in his eyes, that moan tying itself in knots on his tongue. The breath is gone from her suddenly: knocked from her like a curtain pulled swift from a cage — but she finds a bit of air, somewhere, somehow she finds it. Because she knows what he wants to hear, knows what he _aches_ to hear and she will give him anything, everything — always. Please, please.

“For you,” she whispers — and there are tears in her voice, in his damp eyes. “For _you_ , Jon.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
>   
> Mm, just a little picset I made to set the mood for this fic (it may hop to the beginning of the first chapter if I ever get round to tidying the notes up etc.) I promised smut and I promised feelings and I hope you find that I am — _so far_ — delivering. I’m letting my writing style run a little... looser than usual; hope the long sentences and endless commas aren’t _too_ annoying, haha! Third chapter is already halfway to written, featuring more smut (obviously) history, memories, confessions, resolutions, and more, hooray! Hope you enjoyed this if you are here; thank you so much for reading as ever, my loves. ❤️ 


	3. the second son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > ‘ _For you_ , she kept saying it as she arched her back, as her chest opened, as she waited for him to dip his fingertips inside it. _For you, Jon_.’
> 
> a quick note: their teenage tangle took place when Jon was on the cusp of **20** and Sansa was **18** ; it has been nearly 4 years since said _tangle_ . . . happy reading! 🥂

There is a pounding in her head. Sansa swallows, but her mouth stays dry. A thunderclap in her ears; for a moment, she wonders if her heart has finally blown, burst — a pulse of fire obliterating everything bound by her bones, her skin.

Silence weighs heavy as she sits there with Jon inside her. His mouth is on her shoulder and the warmth of his breath feels like it is burning hotter than her heart — like it could melt her skin away, show him all that lies beneath it. There is no fear to the thought of baring herself to him like that, though, no anxiety. He has seen everything already. There are no secrets between them; there never has been. There never will be.

Her lips are parted, her teeth gritted. Their faces level slowly and she looks at him and her bones hurt. They ache. He is etched onto — _into_ — every single one of them.

Over the years she has tried to ignore that fact, crumple it, toss it away as someone else would drop a scrap of paper onto the pavement, a burned-down cigarette onto the grass. Now, she realises that she has kept it in her pocket all along. It has never left her.

It has sat inside her all these years as Jon is sitting — here, now — so deep within her being she is sure her body must have been designed to suit the shape of him, must always have a piece missing from its makeup without that shape making it whole. A space carved by and for — _only_ for, always for — him.

Feels almost unbearable, the silence blanketing them. The way they sit so still and quiet with eyes full of stars and tongues empty of words and the air around them singing with everything that is left unsaid. Everything that is unsaid — and yet so clearly, soundlessly understood. He shifts minutely; she stays him wordlessly, immediately.

Unbearable, it is — it _is_ — but she will bear it. She will stay quiet and still and she will let her bones hurt for him until they stutter, shout, _scream_ —

“Sans.”

Just a word, a word dashed tiny in the infinite framework pinning together all the thousands of words she has listened to, learned, lingered on during the stretch of her existence. Thousands, _millions_ of them. How is it that one word borne of one tongue spoken in one tone can make her will to keep quiet and still crumble so quickly, so brutally, so _keenly_ , completely? It angers her as much as it excites her. It makes her feel alive — for once, for _once_.

There is nothing tentative in the small movement of her hips now. Her body cannot be denied any longer. It is hungry even as it is filled and there is a hunt to be had, something to chase, a wave to crest and build and crest again. A flicker of that violence now, stoking its way back to burning in her belly.

He scents it — of course he does — his lower lip quivers like a wolf moving through a blood-dark wood; but he does not move. He will not move until she lets him loose, frees him with a look, a word of her very own. She will give him it. Oh, she will give him anything, everything — just let her live a bit, let her live again.

“Jon,” she whispers. “ _Please_.”

*

Did she whisper the same that first time it happened? Sansa knows only that she begged later — _please, Father, please_ — when it was all done, when they were caught, when the chair was righted and the candles lit and the shadows played their strange shapes across her father’s face. Her blouse was torn, Jon was gone, and she was left with the ribbons of his making held limp against her stomach.

_What have you done?_

Her head rocks back from past to present, a moan falling swiftly between her lips as she feels Jon’s teeth graze her chin. She twines her fingers into his hair and yanks herself forward, lifts his face, kisses him. She is breathing hard, her skin is boiling. There is sweat peppering her brow; she tastes the salt of it on his lips and she moans, wants more of it. More, more, _more_.

_What have you done, Sansa?_

A thunderclap: the heartbeat in her ears, the iron of her father’s voice ringing against the shadowy stonework. Damp thighs, the ache between them deepening as she shifted on her soles, shivered behind the ruins of her shirt. Past to present, present to past. It is bound up, she is tied into it, too tired to cut herself free — she lives it, she _lives_ it.

_You have ruined everything I have worked to build, Sansa. Everything. Do you know that?_

Jon is beneath her but she barely sees him now. The chandelier drips its crystals above, the curtains stir in their gold-edged cradles. The cage is closing in on her, tightening hard bars around her heart, squeezing it. She gasps, her hips buck and stutter and the palm she presses to Jon’s chest holds slim hope of steadying her.

 _There will be no bond between our Houses now, only bad blood. There will be no keeping the North free of southern players, southern politics. It will be polluted by southern money, painted in southern shame_ — _and so will you. So will you._

She is hot, hotter than she has ever been. A pulse of fire that used to be her heart, threads of flame making up the valleys of her veins. Every bit of her is alive and burning and _filled_ and maybe her father was right about her. Maybe shame does follow her like a shadow, stick to her like mud — like blood made bad.

_Are you proud of those achievements? Tell me, Sansa. Are you proud of yourself?_

There is a hand around her throat now. She twists her fingers over it, pins it tighter. Harder. Gasps a breath, swallows what little air she catches, wills it to the winds.

_What have you done?_

Nothing, nothing, _nothing_. She wants to shout it, scream it — not whisper it like she did back then in the iron of her father’s glare, the chill of that candlelit hall. But it isn’t true. She did something spread-legged, fucked to stars and ash and bits of dust by Jon — _laughing_ , he was laughing — the great table shuddering, scraping against the flagstones as her father’s face turned to thunder in the doorway and the men of the family he was hosting drifted away till they turned into the nothing she always prayed they would be.

Sansa didn’t know it then, but she knows it now: that _something_ she did. For herself — for Arya, too.

“Jon! Just like that. Just like — oh! _Jon_.”

That’s what Sansa did on that fucking tabletop. She freed her sister from a future formed of a gilt-edged cage — even as she sealed herself inside it.

*

It was a party to celebrate her engagement. Sansa was trapped, unhappy. Her fiancé kissed her; he didn’t seem to notice the tears dappling her cheek. Neither did her father — he was busy leading the guests in a toast to a match, a marriage of his making.

Sansa did what she was supposed to do. She smiled as she tapped a thumb against the stem of the flute sitting in her hand: cool, unsipped. She thanked the guests for the gifts, the cook for the cake. She danced and she smiled and she laughed quietly at things that made her want to frown. But she could not ignore the way her fiancé’s father stood close to her own, weighing plans, their eyes darting between her sister and the second son. The second son with his pale eyes, plump lips. The second son darkened by rumour, silenced six-figure settlements — the second son who liked to wear a bone-handled knife in his belt.

The glass trembled between her fingers; she clutched at it as she fled.

Jon found her — of course he found her — when has he not? He held her shoulders in the shadows of that unlit hall, looked into her eyes. They spoke softly, lowly. He let her cry into his neck. Somewhere, somehow, her crying turned to kissing. She licked his earlobe, bit it — and it happened. It happened.

 _Please_ , she breathed it: throat still stinging from the salt of her tears. _I want you to fuck me_.

He smiled at that. Sansa never used such coarse words; but it was in her even then, just waiting for Jon to strike it, stoke it — an edge of violence, a rallying cry against the tangle her father wanted to make of his daughter’s fate.

They untangled it on that tabletop, her and Jon: button by button, beat by beat. Every bit of her was alive and burning and _filled_ — by flesh, fingers, feeling, _fury_. It simmered just beneath her skin, that feral streak her parents had thought was long ago put-out. Sansa was the pretty porcelain doll, the little lady who always did as she was told — quietly. She was a wolf, too; but they had forgotten that. Maybe she had as well, until that night.

She howled loud enough to remind herself of the fact. Jon laughed to hear it and she was smiling to see him laugh and then she was laughing, too. She wanted to press herself tighter to him, sink into him, become him, push her heart between his ribs, his lips, let him keep it wild and free and reckless and laughing and so like him — as it should be, as it was _meant_ to be. Always. Please, please.

 _For you_ , she kept saying it as she arched her back, as her chest opened, as she waited for him to dip his fingertips inside it. _For you, Jon_.

*

Ragged, panting, she is airless in Jon’s arms. He is all around her: flat of his wrist to the small of her back, a hand keeping her thighs spread as they roll, shift. Flush against the sheets, her skin is burning — she feels as bright as her hair. His fingertips dig into her hips as he wrenches her where he wants her and he is dipping back inside her now and her eyes are rolled deep to the back of her head and the world is black.

“Sans,” he whispers. “Sansa.”

Pulled back from the brink, the blue-black nothing of a void she has come to know and hate and curse even as it calls her name. But Jon is stronger than that void. He is stronger than anything, everything — _anyone_. She is safe in his hands and her body is made to carry him inside it: always, always. His lips are skating between her breasts and — slowly — the gilt-bars of the cage around her heart begin to pull free.

“Please,” she breathes. “ _Please_.”

Grapples them with his fingers, she is sure of it. Bends them back and snaps them clean and she is bursting out of them. They are ash and molten ruin and gone, gone — _gone_. His name crackles on her tongue; it bursts like static on the air. He finds her mouth, kisses her and Sansa thinks that if this is what shame feels like she will coat herself in it. Shadows and mud and bad blood — she will paint her cheeks with it, wear it with pride in her heart.

“I love you,” it rushes from her now: a torrent that, this time, her tongue cannot stop. “I _love_ you, Jon.”

“Sansa.” Blinks hard, as if she has hurt him, sunk a hand inside his chest and taken hold of his heart. “ _Sans_ … I love you, too.”

There are tears dappling her cheeks; he smooths them away with his thumb, catches them up in a flutter of kisses that sing across her skin like wings, like birds taking flight. Feathers on her skin — inside it, too. Just like that first time: the thunder of her heartbeat, the quickness of her breathing, the speed of her feeling, the frenzy, the _urgency_ of it all. But there is no mild sense of panic underlying it all now. There is only an edge of clarity honed sharp — biting.

Poor little rich kids run out of town, the ruin of their families. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they are nothing to do with any of that. Old money, polished parquet floors, beeswax candles burned to soot in a single sitting, fates decided in the shadows thrown by the cradle that bears them — a hallowed, dusty way of life that feels nothing like living.

 _This_ is living — here, now — and _fuck you Father_ , she will decide her own fate, make her own pack. But first she will fall and fly and climb and cry. She will come and it will be glorious, it will make every bit of her body glow. She will glitter bright and good and clean as everything she deserves — as the shine of Jon’s smile lighting up the dark.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a fourth and final chapter (it is already written) to cap things off and grant us a bit of closure. More details (and smut, **#sorrynotsorry** ) are woven into that; but I appreciate that many readers don’t enjoy all the vagaries and ambiguous, nameless things I seem to love littering with liberal abandon through my writing . . . _so_ if you have any burning questions/confusions of course drop me a comment and I will do my very best to answer them! Hope you are safe, well, and managing as best you can in the current climes our world is slowly waking up to. Love and power to all of you. Always. ❤️
> 
>  **p.s.** also some of you might be like biiiiish it’s the 21st century, arranged marriage lol what?? but baby this is fiction and it’s fabulous let’s do what we want just throw that thought to the winds and enjoy it alongside me everything is okay and will make sense I promise x


	4. stone by stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > ‘They lie there quietly in a cloud of cotton, half-ripped sheets. She kisses the marks left by her nails on his shoulders: the moon-shaped fingerholds she found in the dark...’
> 
> anybody order a tall, no foam, full-fat-feelings-finale with an extra shot of smut? because it’s coming right up! ☕

Sansa becomes aware of a dozen things all at once. Crystals glittering high above, chiming like bells in a sept. The little hairs on her arms lifting in a red-gold flush as the breeze catching at the heavy curtains turns biting. Music drifting up from downstairs: soft, slow — a nightingale chasing off the coming dawn, keeping the sky inky for just a little longer. Breathing: hers, his. A bloom of heat dissipating somewhere between her hipbones, deep. She closes her eyes, a sigh shivering slowly over her tongue.

“I can’t move.”

Jon laughs softly into her neck. “You don’t have to.”

“Mmm.”

He laughs again at that breathy sound; she smiles against his skin. They lie there quietly in a cloud of cotton, half-ripped sheets. She kisses the marks left by her nails on his shoulders: the moon-shaped fingerholds she found in the dark. He hums a little at the press of her lips, then puts his cheek flat atop her heart. His head is a hot, heavy stone on her chest — she wonders how it is that she has lived all this time without bearing the exact, delicious weight of it.

“Why did we ever listen?”

Ruffle of breath as he smooths his cheek against her. “To them?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “Them.”

There is no logical answer, they both know that now; but it was different before. Family, duty, honour — it was a three-point axis that defined the turning of the husk that was the world they used to call their own. A world they ripped free from its centuries-ordained course, tossed into the void. A void they stared into together, a void that opened up around them, swallowed them whole.

Even now with Jon’s skin flush against her own, his body pressing her into the bed, his breath toying with the breeze across her breast — even _now_ , she is hungry to stare into that void again, let him beckon her closer to its edge, sink inside it hand-in-hand, reckless, laughing.

Vibrates in her, that want, that ache. It slides from her breastbone, the small of her back to sit as Jon is sitting still inside her: lower, softer, a breath away from slipping out. There is a flicker of urgency — youthful, panicky — making butterflies of her blood at the thought of him pulling away from her like that, leaving her to face that void alone once more. But there are no secrets between them; he knows them all, and he burrows himself against her body now until they are ivy, vines in an olive grove.

“Please,” she breathes into his hair. “Please, Jon.”

“I won’t move,” he says lowly — and the butterflies fade away. “I won’t leave, Sans.”

*

It ended a little differently the first time. Her howl — of freedom, _fury_ — rang out clearer than she intended. It brought them running to witness the ruin of her arch-backed upon the tabletop, the shadow that laughed and lay between her thighs. Her breasts rolled free as the moans Jon was pulling from her, her blouse bunched torn and tattered in his fists. Moonlight flashed like thunder at the windows; a ray of storm-light limning the men who moved to make her fate, faces stony as the archway they stood beneath.

There were screams at first, shouts — then came the silence: crushing, all-consuming. A silence that seemed worse than all the noise, the venom, the threats, the cries of bad blood and broken bonds. It was a silence that stacked itself around her, stone by stone, until she felt suffocated by it, buried beneath it — as if the great hall had cracked and crumbled and consumed her.

Sansa will never forget the naked fury in her father’s eyes. Such a mild man — but he was a wolf in that moment. His fingers twitched as if he was hungry to tear out her throat. Maybe he would have, had the others not been there to stay his hand. Her fiancé’s father weighed her with a cool look as if judging the value of her hide, then swept out of the hall, the party, the match brokered and broken and burned to ash and nothing. The second son vanished, too, and Sansa breathed a smile despite it all — because the bone-handled knife in his belt would never touch her sister, never trace its games upon skin now sun-kissed across the narrow sea. 

Words took up the sword, dashed silence down with grim, determined strokes. Her father spoke of things that belonged in history books dusty as the way of life he clung to — clings to still — things laughed at in the modern age, the axis of which that husk of a world refuses to turn upon. Ruined daughters. Prospects. Honour. The North staying free of any jot of outside influence in its politics, its policies, its plans, its partnerships.

He held it in his hand, that which he had offered her: a future — a _cage_ — he raged at her for dashing upon the rocks of _a teenage rebellion_. Threw it at her with words until she had to catch it, turn it in her fingers, watch its gilt-bars glitter, gleam. 

Sansa held the small, intricate inevitability of the future decided by her father for his daughters — business bolstered by marriage, a manor house in the hills, Myrish lace, expensive silks, flowery perfume, airless _emptiness_ — close like a secret. Then she tore it up and threw it in his face.

Jon was gone by the time she left that hall; but the heat of him she felt still inside her. It glowed like the candles flickering in their cradle above the table where she had come alive in the pre-lit gloom, just for a moment. The candles flickering odd shadow-shapes across Ned Stark’s stony face as he sat his righted chair and spat into his sleeve and rubbed the heat of bodies out of the tabletop into which they had bled their bliss.

*

“He told me the same.” A little pause — smoke sucked over his teeth. “That I ruined you. Cigarette?”

Sansa takes the packet Jon proffers. “He spoke to you?”

“Aye. Just before I left.”

They are sitting on the floor beneath the sash-window, backs propped against the cool wall. He has an arm resting loosely around her shoulders; the fingers of his right hand sift through the copper curls striking fire in the dim-lit air. They are naked. Her bones hurt and she wants him inside of her again — but the cigarette slid between her lips, she wants that, too. She lights it, inhales, thinks of candlelight as the ember of its end glows orange.

“What did you say to him?”

“That I’d do it all again,” he says casually. “That I would wait for you. That if you didn’t come to the city, I would go back north. Mm.” His thumb rasps gently over the bloom of her shoulder. “Find you.”

Her heart leaps, but she keeps her voice light. “You said that?”

“Aye.” Reaches up, taps his cigarette against the windowsill. “I meant it, too.”

Smoke plumes onto his skin as she bends her head to press a kiss to his shoulder, his neck. “He hates that I’m here.” Lips soft as the words on her tongue, the tone of her voice. “Hates it almost as much as what we did on that table.”

“What _have_ you been doing in this gods-forsaken city to upset him so much, Sansa Stark?” There is a smile in his voice as he says it — somehow, she catches it, colours her own cheeks with it. “Drinking, partying. Getting firsts in every essay.”

They laugh and then she is on her back, hair a fan of flame against the rug blanketing the floorboards. He pinches the cigarette out from between her fingers. Slowly, she arches her soles up off the rug, her knees tapping up and out as she luxuriates in watching him. The stretch of the muscles in his side as he reaches up to the ashtray balanced on the windowsill, drops her cigarette in with his own.

“My father just… makes up his own little fantasies about my life here, I think.” Sansa runs her fingertips over the ripple of those muscles now, her thighs parting for Jon to slide between them. “Street-walking, scoring, shaming his hallowed name — that kind of thing.”

Jon is smiling. “That’s not you.”

“No,” she whispers. “It’s not.”

That smile. She wants the shape of it pressed to her cunt, she wants the rug to burn her back, her shoulder-blades: wide sweeps of red on milky skin to track the bucking of her hips against his face. His smile deepens as he reads her and she offers it to him, her body an open book for him, let him press himself between its pages. Please, please.

“ _Jon_.”

Her eyes are closed, but she feels his smile on her throat. “Turning in their tombs, hmm?”

“Bit dramatic,” she hums, whimpers. “That’s Ned Stark — ”

“ — all over.” He finishes what she cannot. Her voice is gone because his hand is between her thighs and she can taste the tobacco on his tongue. “Fuck them. Your forefathers. Your would-be fiancé, his whole bloody family.” At her ear now, a breath that burns even as it makes her shiver. “None of them are looking. Neither is your dear old daddy.” The sound that leaves her at that word is unholy; the crystals clang overhead. “It’s just me, hmm? Just me and you.”

Somehow, she is blinking up at him. “Always?”

“Always, Sans.”

He is a breath away from being back inside her and she wants it — oh, she _aches_ for it — but her voice flickers back to life in her throat. At the frown furrowing her brow, Jon stills between her thighs, and rests the weight of his body on a forearm beside her face. He thumbs a strand of hair back from her eyes, looks into them quietly.

“Robb’s getting married this summer,” she says lowly. “At Winterfell.”

Jon nods. “He sent me an invitation.”

“He sent me one, too.” A shivery breath clatters her teeth. “But I can’t go home once exams are done.” 

“Why?”

“This and that,” she whispers. “I have my reasons.”

His thumb stills: a bloom of heat on her skin. “You can’t miss your brother’s wedding.”

“Mum doesn’t want me there.”

“How do you know that’s what your mother wants?”

She blinks down at the slim space between their bodies. “My father told me.”

“He’s lying.”

Beat of quiet, then — “I know.”

“Your mother wants you there. Robb wants you there.” The confidence in his voice shimmers, glows — eclipses the crystals glittering overhead as she drags her eyes up to meet his own. “I want you there, too.”

Her chest opens, her heart is in her mouth. “Are you inviting me to a wedding, Jon Snow?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Sansa Stark.”

It beats on her tongue and he dips his head and takes it in a kiss so gentle she feels like her whole body is being cradled: a fledgling, a butterfly held in a soft-cupped palm. She spreads her wings and pulls him in until the hard press of his belly against her is a part of her being, her makeup — the very essence of her imprint on the cool, smoky air.

*

After the storm and shadow of the great hall, her mother stole into the bedroom with its silk hangings and soft, lemon-coloured lights. She cried into Sansa’s hair as she brushed it. Later, they sat on the cushioned seat beneath the window, shared a cigarette.

 _Stone by stone_ , she whispered it all night till Sansa was choked as much by her mother’s soft voice as the smoke. _It was my lot, too. Love didn’t just happen to us. We built it slowly, stone by stone_.

Her mother looked like her heart would break; but Sansa shook her head, said all there was to be said and did not hesitate to say it. That things had changed, that the world had moved to a different axis when the old way wasn’t looking. That she wanted her life to be her own — nothing more, nothing less.

 _I want that for you, too_. _Darling, I do._ _But your father_ — _it’s difficult_.

“No,” she whispers now. “It’s not.”

Jon kisses the lids of her closed eyes. Sansa lets her body sink into the contours of the rug, then arches her spine away from it. Her chest pushes up, her arms stretch out; breath fills her lungs and her skin sings taut across her bones. Every bit of her is alive and glowing and then Jon pushes inside her and the air skates past her lips in a damp, reedy moan and she is full at _last_ — body, heart, soul. Stone by stone, the structure of her existence built solid by and for her and the wind can never shake it loose, never make it crumble. She is no longer a mess of mortar and glass and brick and shame shimmering white-hot, suffocating. The gilt-edged cage is gone — and she is free.

“You want it harder now?”

His voice is a breath at her throat. It is low, smoky; but the smile in it shines even so. She stretches blissfully beneath his weight, her skin caressed by the weave of the rug she lies upon. Her arms lift from where they lie out-flung at her sides and come to rest on his body instead. She fills herself with him: the plump muscles of his shoulders nestled into her palms, the curls run wild round his face woven between her fingers.

Her lips move against his ear. “You know what I want.”

“Mm. I do.” He pulls his hips back, then slides forward; she is breathless, star-filled, _gone_. “Slow. Deep. That’s what you want.” She whimpers, whines as he pushes deeper for an answer. “Isn’t it, sweetheart?”

Sansa nods, bites her lip, screws her eyes shut tighter. “Yes. _Yes_.”

“What do you say, then?”

“Please, Jon.” Her eyes burst open, her fingers fly to her face. “Please, please, _plea_ — ”

His lips find hers. He kisses her quiet, pulls her hands away from her cheeks and pins them above her head. Gently. He dips back a little, stares down at her and she wonders at the light in his eyes as he releases her left wrist. Slowly, she reaches out toward him as if she is touching a window, marvelling at the colours that move behind it.

But there is no glass — here, now — only warmth meeting her fingertips. The lines of his face: strong, clean, hers to hold. She skates a touch along his jaw, digs a gentle grip into his beard and pulls him down till their brows are pressed together. His hips move just slightly, his cock jars inside her and she flutters round him as her eyelashes patter against her cheeks. A broken moan shatters up from her throat.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “You’re safe. You’re loved.” He moves again and she folds around him. “You are mine.”

It rushes through her, then: a brief glimmer, a belly-dip at the thought of Winterfell, the wedding, the white gown and the three-tiered cake, the candlelit ghosts waiting for her to step back into their shadows.

She grips at him now, wraps her thighs closer to his sides, gasps. “I don’t know if I can do it, Jon. I don’t — ”

“You’re Sansa Stark.” A little pause — for effect, maybe. “Aren’t you?”

Her mind clears instantly. Everything fades and all of it — centre, edges, _all_ of it — is filled by him and her and the here and now and the nightingale sings so sweetly she cannot help but smile, beam up at him like she is the sun fresh-risen from beyond the shadows of the eastern hills. There is belief in his eyes, belief and so much more; they are a mirror to her own. She knows it — she _knows_ it.

“I am,” she says now. “Sansa fucking _Stark_.”

His smile is a moon-glint and she tastes the words that shape it so. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” There is nothing in her heart but light, and her cheeks rise and colour not with shame, but with the warmth of his body blooming inside and against her own. “Now fuck me,” she breathes it, drunk on love, laughing, reckless. “I want you to fuck me.”

He bites the laughter off her lips. “Mm. What do you say, sweetheart?”

“ _Please_.” A nip to his jaw now. “I want to come… for _you_ , Jon.”

There are tears in her voice, in his damp eyes as she says it. But they are from laughing too hard and making up for living too little and Sansa moans as she smiles and she kisses Jon till he moans, too, and she thinks how young she is, how loved she is — how her life is really just now beginning. A life she has chosen to share with a man who loves — and _lives_ — the very bones of her being.

Maybe it is another inevitable thing in the structure of her existence, what has happened here between them. Inevitable, but she finds that she doesn’t mind that fact at all — because this life she is living in this very moment is a life that is all her own, something fated for and by herself. At last, at _last_.

Sansa tips back her head, lost to the feeling of Jon moving back where he belongs, and her smile shines brighter than the crystals overhead, the candles half a world away — bright and good and clean as the coming dawn teasing its light for only the two of them to see.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
>   
> Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in writing ( _committing_ ) the same canon-context tropes to Sansa over and over but writing this tiny little verse of empowerment for her after bad parenting (understatement of the century there, haha) and past heartbreak and emotional turmoil . . . it is glittery and full of sunshine and happiness and light and _yes gurl_ she is going to stride back into Winterfell with her head held high, Jon on her arm, Robb is going to grin at her and wrap her up in a bear-hug (because he’s _not_ a total bastard in an au of mine for once!!!! what is this sorcery???) and Catelyn will be teary and contrite and heavily on the wines and Ned will be sheepish (finally!!!) in the full glory of his daughter’s sunshine strength and Sansa will hold strong with her _fuck you, Father_ oh she will and she will sing and dance the night away in the prettiest dress, diamonds dripping from her ears, and everyone gon be nodding at her like get it girl GET IT that is Sansa fucking _Stark_ 💃 and yes maybe her and Jon will have another table-fuck for old times’ sake okay gotta make them candles shiver 🔥 ANYWAY thank you **so** much to those of you utter darlings that have read along, indulged me this decadent tangent into yew-edged lawns and expensive wines — I have enjoyed writing it a mad amount! Appreciate yous lots. ❤️
> 
>  **p.s.** that is just a little new pic-set all bright and good and glinting at what the future holds for our poor little loved-up rich babies aaaaah I love them 🥰 bye now, honeys!


End file.
